Representations of wars

Professors’ research interests stimulated at public roundtable

VERONICA CARR STAFF

The research cluster Representations of War held their first public roundtable on Wednesday, Nov. 1. Three presentations were given to interested professors and students, centred on the idea that “literature and art are a false or misrepresented interpretation of war that we should be very aware of in our ethical judgment of the subject matter,” as philosophy professor Michael Stack said in his presentation.

Stack’s topic was the most controversial of the evening — how representations of war such as paintings, movies, and novels only scratch the surface of war. He argued that the moral and ethical judgment of war couldn’t be placed in the hands of art or literature.

According to the research cluster’s website, the phrase “the representation of war” encompasses the great variety of ways war is understood by those working in such academic disciplines as philosophy, languages and literature, film, sociology, strategic studies, and the visual arts.

Another presenter, James Chlup, presented the case that Greeks and Romans saw wars as key turning points in their culture. As Chlup, an assistant professor of ancient history in the department of classics, handed out examples of literature, he commented that “every writer expressed their war as the ultimate and greatest war — it was apparent that war had become normalized in that time period.”

Andrew Woolford, a professor in the department of sociology, spoke primarily from his co-authored paper, “Collecting on Moral Debts: Reparations for the Holocaust,” which spoke of victimization and the role of power in war. Perceptions of the Holocaust and the Jewish case against West Germany were examined.

A mosaic of diverse faculty members and graduate students at the University of Manitoba, from both the humanities and the social sciences, have recently come together with a common purpose — researching and teaching each other on the subject of war representations.

This research cluster formed last spring and has been meeting three or four times each semester to discuss scholarly articles from various individuals or texts written by a group member.

“Our hope is in future years we will be able to organize a conference as well as publish a book: a collection on the representation of war,” said Stephan Jaeger, the respondent for the roundtable and an assistant professor in the department of German and Slavic studies.

Although new members are always welcome to join the cluster, the current associates of the research cluster include members from the department of German and Slavic studies, classics, English, philosophy, sociology, the Centre for Defence and Security Studies and political studies.

As the primary supporter for the cluster, the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities (UMIH) was formed in 1990 to promote research and scholarships in the humanities while helping to acquire external funding.

Thus far in the school year topics for discussion amongst the cluster included just and unjust war, Russia at war, and and crossdisciplinary perspectives on the representation of war.

In the spring of 2007, the Representation of War research group is organizing a symposium featuring two scholars of the topic. One will be Serguei Oushakine, an assistant professor in the department of Slavic languages and literatures at Princeton University. Jaeger anticipates the second will be Dominick LaCapra, a professor of history and human studies and comparative literature at Cornell University. Although he has published an array of books, LaCapra’s current research interest is in the area of trauma and Holocaust studies.

“We’re trying to give more opportunity to not only the collective but also the U of M faculty and students to discuss the various issues of war representations.” said Jaeger. “We want the group to go somewhere and have an influence on people.”